If you’re keen to build your capability as a leader, be more sophisticated in your coaching or better understand what it means to be a high calibre professional coach, then this blog is well worth reading!
From experience as Co-owner and Founder of an international leadership development company that uses coaching and mentoring, I can honestly say that finding high calibre professional coaches is not an easy task.
As with most professions, having a qualification in the field does not mean a high standard of applied capability. My company hires coaches for traits and mind-set, then coaches-the-coaches for coaching excellence.
Inherent in being one of our profession’s best is possessing a real appreciation of the complex times in which our clients must express their leadership. Our Leadership Coaching Model is based on 8 beliefs:
- Leadership is a way of being, not just a set of skills. Leadership requires presence, authenticity, courage and the emotional competence to manage oneself in situations of ambiguity and complexity. AsiaAus Leaders’ coaching addresses issues of being and not just issues of doing.
- Leadership that meets tomorrow’s complex challenges requires sophisticated Facilitative Leadership skills. Leaders cannot hope to see or know everything. They must rely on practical collaborative skills and tools for tapping the creativity, experience, and commitment of staff and colleagues. AsiaAus Leaders’ coaching addresses collaborative skills and techniques for getting the most from the participation of others.
- Leadership requires reflection as well as action. Leaders are entrusted to steer our rapidly changing world through the various global challenges (and wicked problems) that we will both inherit and come to discover. Their capacity to truly think deeply about complex issues and concepts will be the measure of their individual, and our collective, success. AsiaAus Leaders’ coaching develops deeper thinkers who look beyond the immediate questions raised, comfortably use reflective practice, are genuinely curious about things and easily cope with ambiguity.
- Leadership is as much about capability as it is about competency. A leader’s capability is based on their developmental stage and determines the potential they can explore, and how effectively they use the competencies they’ve acquired. AsiaAus Leaders’ coaching addresses both current capability and competency.
- Change is normal. One of the key distinctions between leadership and management is that leaders deal with change and managers deal with the status quo. Leaders need exemplary skills to initiate, manage and execute change. This requires the capacity to change themselves when necessary, understand the emotional and technical sides of change, and transform resistance to change. AsiaAus Leaders’ coaching supports leaders in their efforts to transition themselves, their people, and their enterprise culture and their business strategy.
- Situations are the result of multiple causes and conditions. Workplaces are composed of complex interdependencies. There are a myriad contributors and factors in both success and failure. A deep systemic understanding of context is critical to problem solving and healthy cultures. AsiaAus Leaders’ coaching provides techniques that encourage leaders to become systems thinkers who appreciate that context is everything!
- Leadership demonstrates ethics, wisdom and empathy. To be most effective, a leader must be of good character and bring his/her whole self to the task. That means both wisdom and compassion. When these are in balance great things can happen and even greater respect can be earned. AsiaAus Leaders’ coaching strives to find that balance between authentic ethical behaviour, embracing intuition and curiosity, and human-ness.
- Self-awareness is necessary for professional development and growth. Before a behaviour, mind-set, assumption or world-view can change, there must be awareness. Professional growth and development starts with emotional intelligence and grows with an appetite for inquiry into oneself. AsiaAus Leaders partners with leaders to deepen their self-awareness so that choice and change are possible.
Contact AsiaAus Leaders if you would like to become an excellent leadership coach, work with one of the best leadership coaches or hone your leadership capability using a coach approach.
